Sunday, August 24, 2014

The Bad Legatus

My friends Dave and Patrick
stopped by Thursday evening to try out Song
of Shadows and Dust. It’s been a busy few days and my memory of
exactly how things went down, turn to turn, is fading quickly… but I’ll do my
best to relay the highlights of the action!

Iskedumdrum, 69 BCE

SITUATION

Quintus Malus Legatus was the
bright shining star of the Iskedumdrum Militia when he joined 15 years ago –
rising quickly and gaining a reputation as a steady, dependable, man who could
get things done. Many still remember him thusly, and turn a blind eye or refuse
to believe some of his more recent activities. Over a decade and a half of
dealing with the worst elements of society, seeing many of the guilty get away
with the worst sorts of crime due to political connections has had a telling
effect on Malus Legatus.First he
became hard and jaded and disaffected, and then became utterly corrupt – taking
bribes, extorting “protection taxes”, and more recently taking a more active
hand in the criminal underworld – using his position as an officer of the
militia to remove his rivals…

Publius Vindicus Consultus is a
young magistrate in Iskedumdrum. He is determined to root out corruption within
the militia. He wants to make an example of Malus Legatus!

Mad with power, Malus Legatus
has become brazen and believes himself untouchable – he is at the point where
he is even willing to risk open confrontation with the magistrates men in the
streets..

SCENARIO

The magistrate needs hard
evidence and has decided to try and capture one of Legatus’ men to be tortured
and interrogated. They score 1 Victory Point for every 50 points of opponents
defeated and a bonus 5 Victory Points if they can capture and drag one of
Legatus’ men off their own table edge.

Malus Legatus is out to teach
the neighborhood why you don’t mess with Malus Legatus. They only score 1
Victory Point for every 100 points of enemies defeated, but score 10 Victory
Points if they can retrieve a bee hive and deposit it in the building of a
businessman that’s been a little behind in paying his “protection tax”.

The scenario takes place in the
scorching heat of midday – only 12 civilians are in the street.

FORCES

Qunitus Malus Legatus - Grizzled
Militia Officer

Q 3+, C 3, 96 points

Armed, Dogged, Leader,
Threatening

Veteran Militiaman

Q 3+, C 3, 50 points

Armed, Bludgeon, Determined

Militia Archer

Q 4+, C 3, 45 points

Agile, Bow, Steadfast

2x Militiamen

Q 4+, C 3, 39 points each

Armed, Bludgeon, Steadfast

Henchman (informer)

Q 4+, C 3, 27 points

Grey

Publius Vindicus Consultus -
Magistrate

Q 2+, C 2, 100

Demagogue, Determined, Tribune

Frantix – Foreign Bodyguard

Q 4+, C 4, 42 points

Armed, Barbarous, Heavy Drinker,
Protect Leader

Armed Henchman

Q 4+, C 3,36 points

Armed, Bellicose

4x Henchmen

Q 4+, C 3, 27 points each

Grey

Blind Prophet

Q 2, C 0, 8 points

Clumsy, Distracting, Short Move,
Slow

THE GAME

Rolling for his Heavy Drinking
Body Guard – Patrick found his drinking today had made him a Combat Master!!

(Remember: click on the pictures
for a bigger version)

The setting for the action. The
behive is tucked in the carner behind the irritable mule and the target
building is the one at the bottom right of the picture (with the chests stacked
against it). The magistrate’s men can be seen entering from the top right. A
few of Malus Legatus’ men can be seen at the top left.

Malus Legatus spots that
meddling Vindicus Consultus and his men approaching.

Innocent civilians standing
about the square unaware of the confrontation about to take place.

Legatus’ militiamen march past
Mad Abdul’s carpet stall…

The standoff in the street.

Legatus’ men rushed in trying to
block the magistrate and his men from advancing further so the militia archer
could get to the beehive in the corner.

I can’t quite remember who
struck the first blows… I think it may have been the Magistrate’s men. The
civilians – that Patrick had hoped might join his cause – scattered.

The Veteran Militiamen was the
first of them to go down – clonked on his head and knocked out cold. This
Patrick decided would be his target for capture – Legatus’ Right Hand Man.
Frantix, the Foreign Bodyguard of the magistrate, also took down the Milita
Archer before he could get to the hive.

There was a little confusion
about the details of how capturing someone worked… in the rules is explains
that at any point during the player with the Abduction objective could choose
to change a kill result to a fall, it then took two action to bind and lift a
captured enemy… it also said that if the carrier was attacked that a captured
enemy would be dropped and should be placed lying down on the table and could
then get up…?!

So we weren’t sure if ANY fallen
opponent (beaten, even roll on dice) could be captured – as long as there was a
standing rival in contact with him that could spend two actions to bind and
lift them? Or did they HAVE to get a “kill” – which would then be considered
“knocked out” who could be bound and carried off at the player’s leisure.

If a captured person was dropped
an did manage to stand up were they automatically unbound and able to fight
again normally? How would they have gotten their weapons back?

To keep things simple for the
evenings scenario, I said that the abducting player had to score a “kill”
result (doubled) – but not “gruesome kill” (tripled) – to “knock out” someone.
One action was required to bind them, a second action was required to pick them
up or grab them to drag away. If they were then contacted they would drop the
captured opponent, but once captured the opponent was essentially just a marker
(as in the Rescue objective) that either side could “pick up” for an action and
drag or lead away as they see fit.

The scrap continues – Legatus’
men were constantly hindered by the presence of the extremely distracting Blind
Prophet…

For some reason Vindicus
Consultus decided to push through the melee into the square – perhaps he wasn’t
feeling much use loafing about in the back – and so decided to march into the
square and try to rouse the citizens against the corrupt militiamen.

Sadly he was cut down by Malus
Legatus himself – not close enough for any of the civilians to join in…

But close enough to his own men
to cause most of them to flee!

Things were looking pretty bad
for the Magistrates men.

But then Dave choked on an
activation rolland someone
rallied the magistrates men: “Lads! Lads! We can’t leave the magistrate lying
in the street there! We can’t let Malus Legatus get away with this!! Let’s go
back there and get ‘em!!”

Frantix the Foreign Bodyguard,
mad with rage, took on TWO militiamen!

Frantix was recoiled from the
Militiamen. One of the Magistrate’s henchmen beat down Malus Legatus’ henchman
who had just picked up the bee hive…

Which unleashed a swarm of angry
bees… Malus Legatus and one of his militamen were knocked down by this –
rolling about on the ground trying to get angry stinging bees out of their
segmented armour!

Frantix took down another
militiamen. The magistrates henchmen just could not get ther veteran militiaman
bound and lifted… so many failed quality rolls… the Militia still hampered by
the Blind Prophet’s presence…

Malus Legatus took to scaring
off the Magistrates henchmen by bellowing threats to put out the eyes of their
families and sell their daughters into Syrian brothels and such…

The game eventually ended due to
the death toll… I think Frantix took down this last Militiaman he was fighting…

In the end, three of the
magistrates men had fled the table and one henchman had been cut down along with
the magistrate himself. Just over 200 points worth of troops defeated or fled
netted Malus Legatus 2 victory points… Checking afterwards, the Henchman died
of his wounds, but Magistrate Publius Vindicus Consultus luckily escaped
serious injury and apparently the Fortunes smile upon him because he gained the
“Lucky” special rule!

Malus Legatus had lost two
militamen, the archer and his henchman (the one we decided was an “informer”). Enough
to give the magistrate 3 victory points! The archer, the hemchman and one of the
militiamen all died. The remaining militiaman was seriously injured and would
suffer a permanent -1C.

Coming soon on Tim’s Miniature Wargaming Blog:

The kids are asking to play a Song
of Shadows and Dust game today – perhaps there’ll be a second game
report posted later this evening!

I liked this battle report a lot. Any AAR with a hive of angry bees is a winner in my books.I also thought the Malus Legatus idea was awfully clever. Will her be played by Harvey Keitel or Nick Cage? :)

Thanks Eric! I have to admit all the ideas for scenarios, so far, have simply come from the objectives table in the game - I simply fill it in with a bit of background fluff to explain why it's all going down.